Admitting that something didn’t go as well as you hoped is a hard thing to do. It’s a rarity. Of course, doing so is slightly easier to do if, when doing it, you casually throw someone under the bus and put the blame on them. That’s what the Chainsmokers are now doing when it comes to their not-so-great performance at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards. The chart-topping duo performed a lackluster rendition of their hit “Closer” with Halsey at the show and in a new interview with Billboard, were pretty straightforward in breaking down the issues with the performance and why singer Andrew Taggart sounded less than stellar.
“It sounded like sh*t. We were told my voice was going to be mixed well, but there was no reverb and it was way louder than the track for the broadcast. I was set up to fail. Nearly every other person lip-synced it, and we knew because we had them in our ears. So now I know why you lip-sync.”
But hey, give Taggart some credit. It was only his second time singing live. It also sounds like it’ll be the last time he ever sings live. I guess if you want to hear a Chainsmokers’ song sung live, you might have to rely on Usher instead, which might not be the worst thing in the world.
The Billboard interview also touched on the various collaborations the duo is working on, rumored to be working on or totally never working on, with Taggart and his partner Alex Pall admitting that they’re now more appealing than they were even a year or so ago; even a few months ago. A prime example is when they approached Weezer about rocking a cameo during the Chainsmokers’ set at Coachella this spring. The band turned them down, but recently, had a change of heart, as Pall told the magazine:
“They were like, ‘Yo! We should do a track together,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, really?’ I can’t blame somebody for saying no early on, but it depends on how you said no and how you came back to us. If you own it, like, ‘I didn’t see the vision, but it’s clear now and it’s super sick,’ I get that. It feels good when those people are like…” Taggart finishes the thought: “Thirsty.”
Seeing as how Weezer’s last album was one of their patented course-correction albums, a return to the “Weezer-sound,” it does make sense that they’d want to experiment some when it comes to a follow-up. So while that’s not really that surprising, it is mildly surprising that the Chainsmokers have dropped the news that they’re currently working with Chris Martin of Coldplay. We don’t know much more about the collaboration, but if anything, we should at least expect Martin to do the singing if the time comes to take the music on the road.
